The present invention relates to Internet services and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for measuring the quality of service being provided to customers and for determining whether or not the quality of service is in compliance with service level agreements (SLAs) that characterize the level of service to be provided to customers.
Internet service providers (ISPs) provide a variety of Internet services to customers such as, for example, electronic mail (e-mail), Voice-Over-IP (Voice Over Internet protocol), networking services and web hosting. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are agreements that identify the level of a particular service that is to be provided by the ISP to a customer. Generally, SLAs guarantee a quality of service to the customer. If the quality of service identified in the SLA is not met, the customer and the ISP typically would like to know that the quality of service was not met. If a given SLA has not been complied with, the ISP may want to know the reason for noncompliance so that it can correct the problem that resulted in the violation of the SLA. The ISP may credit the customer""s account to compensate the customer for the failure to provide the agreed-upon service level.
Although network monitoring tools exist that allow ISPs to monitor the quality of various services being provided to their customers, the tools that are currently available generally only allow compliance or noncompliance with relatively simplistic SLAs to be evaluated. Such SLAs are very limited in that they simply identify a threshold value that will be used to determine whether a particular level of service has or has not been provided over a particular period of time. These SLA compliance criteria are commonly referred to as service level objectives (SLOs). A determination will be made as to whether or not the SLA has been violated based on whether or not the SLO has been met.
Utilizing relatively simplistic SLAs limits the degree to which a particular SLA can be adapted or customized to meet the needs of customers and ISPs. For example, it may be desirable to configure an SLA for an e-mail service that is guaranteed to be only 50% operational between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., provided the e-mail service is guaranteed to be 98% operational for all other time periods and to never be inoperative for more than 10 consecutive minutes during those hours. The ISP may be willing to charge a significantly lower monetary rate for such a service than if the SLA required that the e-mail service be operational at least 98% of the time 24-hours a day. The customer may be willing to accept a lower level of service in exchange for paying a lower monetary rate.
Currently, SLAs do not provide this type of flexibility, which severely limits the ability of the SLAs to meet the needs of the ISPs and their customers. It would be desirable to provide a tool that would enable ISPs to monitor the quality of service being provided to customers in a way that would enable greater flexibility with respect to the service level objectives (SLOs) of the SLAs. It would also be desirable to provide a tool that is flexible with respect to the manner in which the quality of service measurement data is processed in order to accommodate increased variability of the SLOs and increased overall flexibility of the SLAs.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for evaluating Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that describe the level of services that are to be provided to customers by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or Enterprise Service Providers (ESPs). The method and apparatus are utilized to measure the quality of service being provided to customers and to determining whether or not the quality of service is in compliance with an SLA that characterizes the level of service to be provided to customers. Such services include, for example, electronic mail (e-mail), Voice-Over-IP (Voice Over Internet protocol), networking services and web hosting. In accordance with the present invention, an SLA is configured as a data structure that includes a logical expression of one or more Service Level Objectives (SLOs). The method and apparatus of the present invention together comprise an SLA management tool that retrieves and evaluates measurement data associated with each SLO to determine whether or not any SLO has been violated. The SLO evaluation results are then utilized in the logical expression of the SLA to determine whether or not the SLA is compliant.
The SLA management tool of the present invention preferably is capable of generating SLA reports that provide information relating to SLA compliance evaluations. The SLA reports preferably also include information relating to violations of SLOs associated with the SLA. The SLA management tool of the present invention is also capable of configuring SLAs based on user input and/or SLA templates.
These and other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description, drawings and claims.